Why Heino’s quit Hill­side for good!

Heino Sch­mitt says farewell to the Laan af­ter more than a decade of play­ing the su­per-pop­u­lar Al­tus de Bruyn.

Laan lovers were stunned on Fri­day 27 Novem­ber: Heino Sch­mitt, who’s played Al­tus for 11 years, has quit. His last day on set was at the end of Novem­ber, but we’ll still see him un­til 18 Fe­bru­ary 2016. What does this mean for Al­tus’s mar­riage to Paula (Di­aan Lawren­son), es­pe­cially since the couple only just rec­on­ciled and re­mar­ried in Septem­ber?

HIS COL­LEAGUES RE­MEM­BER

There’s no one at 7de Laan who knows Heino bet­ter than his co-star Di­aan. “I’ve known a lit­tle longer than view­ers about Heino’s de­ci­sion to leave, so I’ve had some time to process it,” she says. Di­aan re­mem­bers just how much the couple have been through. “Paula and Al­tus have come through so much heartache and now their paths must split again,” Di­aan says, adding that she’s sup­port­ing her friend in his deci- sion to spread his wings. “I’m go­ing to miss him ter­ri­bly. We’ve be­come such good friends and I know the ro­man­tic re­la­tion­ship be­tween our two char­ac­ters has crept into view­ers’ hearts and that they’re go­ing to have to process his ab­sence.”

Hen­nie Ja­cobs, who plays Diederik, has also been in a lot of scenes with Heino as an em­ployee at Bruyn­waves, Al­tus’s event plan­ning com­pany. “Heino and I have made our way to­gether on the 7de Laan set over the past nine years. We be­came best friends and we’ll still be hang­ing out a lot off set,” Hen­nie says. He’s full of praise for his pal too. “Heino’s never pre­tended to be any­one but who he really is. He’s hum­ble and cares about peo­ple. I couldn’t have asked for a bet­ter friend­ship.”

Christo Davids, who por­trays nosy jour­nal­ist Er­rol, also speaks with great fond­ness and re­spect for Heino. “He ab­sorbs in­for­ma­tion like a sponge and we’ve had many con­ver­sa­tions be­hind the scenes about history and trav­el­ling. Ev­ery­one needs a change of scenery now and then and I’m happy for Heino if that’s what he wants in life. I re­mem­ber Heino was my very first real friend on set when I be­came part of 7de Laan in 2007 and not to see him ev­ery day any­more is tough,” Christo says.

ADÍOS AL­TUS!

While we’re sworn to se­crecy (for now!), we can tell you that Al­tus’s sto­ry­line will be­come a lot more dra­matic and grip­ping right up un­til his last scene. Di­aan says that view­ers will be in tears with what hap­pens. “The writ­ers have really come up with a shock­ing sto­ry­line that will shake view­ers to the core. It was al­ready too much for me as an ac­tress when I had to play out those scenes in Novem­ber. Heino and I just couldn’t stop the tears from fall­ing.” Break out the tis­sues, don’t miss a sin­gle episode, and re­mem­ber to get fu­ture is­sues of tv­plus for all the dra­matic rev­e­la­tions as they hap­pen…